Saturday, May 11, 2013

On the Death of Statistical Practice

I’m still reeling from the provocative but important new book, “Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How Live, Work and Think,” co-authored by Oxford professor Viktor Mayer-Schonberger and Economist editor Kenneth Cukier, that I twice blogged on a few weeks back.As I noted then: “I must admit my traditional statistical grounding has taken a hit with Big Data. The notions that the core scientific method techniques of sampling, measurement error, and the experimental method’s cause and effect, may well lose importance as central components of the analytics’ tool chest hasn’t quite registered with me yet– and maybe never will. ... How do we become better consumers of data for value? ... I received an advance copy of Tom Davenport and Jinho Kim’s moderating “Keeping Up with the Quants: Your Guide to Understanding + Using Analytics.” I’m a big fan of Davenport, author of award-winning books “Competing on Analytics” and “Analytics at Work,” as well as countless articles on analytics in the Harvard Business Review, the MIT Sloan Management Review and Information Management. Few in our business have the analytics Rolodex of Davenport. ...